


Feline Good

by moonix



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Andrew is perpetually irritated, Cats, M/M, Neil has a thing for lost causes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 22:20:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8419453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: Or, five times the cats were a fucking nuisance, and one time they weren't so bad.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luvanderwon (missbysshe)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=luvanderwon+%28missbysshe%29).



> It seems I have a thing for the 5+1 format lately... I don't think there are any big trigger warnings for this, just some mentions of Andrew's past trauma and him trying to deal with it, a brief mention of self harm, a mention of Nathan, and Andrew keeping knives under his pillow. Also, note that this is rated M and there is some (not very explicit) sex in one scene. (And Andrew swears a lot?) If you have any concerns or questions, please feel free to ask me! The cats are from Nora Sakavic's extra content. Thanks @luvanderwon for the prompt and permission to pick your brain about it :D

1

_come get me at the park?_

Andrew let his phone drop from his hand to the floor and closed his eyes. He waited to see if he would simply doze off again, but Neil's message was inked into his awareness, shiny and raw like a new tattoo under cling film. He waited another ten minutes, just to reassure himself that he could, then got up from the sofa in one smooth motion and scooped his phone up off the floor.

The day had gone from shabby grey to wet blue while Andrew had been asleep. He didn't bother replying to Neil's message, but when he pulled up by the park's front gates a few minutes later, Neil was already sitting at the curb, waiting for him. Andrew gritted his teeth against the discomfort of being predictable and left the door open as he stepped out of the car, the cool air chasing shivers down from the top of his spine where his neck was exposed above his collar. Neil was still in his running shorts, faded bruises splashed over his knees like paint, and he'd taken off his jacket and wrapped it around a quivering, furry something in his lap, cradling it like he was afraid it might break in his grip. Andrew needed a moment to collect his breath and lit a cigarette before crouching down in front of Neil and his bounty.

Life had left Andrew with no gentleness to spare, but Neil was like sea glass, rubbed soft by harsh waters and sand. Andrew had no doubt as to who was the better survivor of the two of them, though it seemed he still needed the occasional reminder.

“Josten,” he said, a warning that was already too late.

“He's hurt,” Neil whispered. His voice was anguished and small, and Andrew had to learn forward to hear it properly, his weight delicately balanced on the balls of his feet. “I want to take him to a vet.”

“Better to just put it out of its misery,” Andrew said, flicking a cool look at the cat in Neil's lap. Its eyes were open and its breathing was laboured, but for some ridiculous reason, it was purring in Neil's hands.

How a thing so broken could be so content, Andrew was still figuring out for himself.

“I need to try,” Neil said, shaking his head. It was no secret that Neil had a thing for lost causes, yet Andrew wanted to grab him and shake him until he stopped fucking _hoping_ so much. “Will you drive us?”

Andrew poked his fingers into the cat's matted fur, and the purring grew even more frantic in pitch.

“If it pees in my car, I'll break its other legs.”

“Oh, is that what's wrong with you, fluffkins?” Neil mused, peering into the bundle. “Suppose Andrew's right. That's not too bad then, you hear? We might fix you yet.”

“We,” Andrew said, “aren't doing anything. That broken leg is the least of this thing's problems. And we are not keeping it.”

Neil only made a vague humming noise as he got up and carried the cat over to the car, and Andrew knew he was fucked. The most vexing thing was that he had no one to blame but himself – he'd known the moment Neil Josten hit the ground running in a locker room in Arizona that he would be trouble, even if the very particular trouble of his boyfriend Neil Josten rescuing stray cats from the park had not been the exact scenario he'd imagined back then.

 

2

_Fwhump._

Andrew had a knife in his hand before he was fully awake. His foot had knocked something soft off the bed when he had kicked out, and it took him a moment to connect that sensory afterimpression with the indignant yowl coming from somewhere to his right. A second later, Neil was muttering his name and Andrew had to squeeze his eyes shut against the sudden light from the bedside lamp, his hand still gripping the cool handle of the knife.

“Fluffkins, we talked about this,” Neil murmured, close enough that Andrew could feel the warmth radiating off his body. Neil knew better than to touch Andrew in these moments, though, and Andrew forced himself to breathe and rest the knife in his lap, not quite ready to let go yet.

“It's a stupid cat,” Andrew gritted out, “it's not going to stop being stupid just because you tell it to. Bit like you, really.”

Neil hummed, and Andrew tried not to flinch when the cat jumped back onto the bed, this time on Neil's side. It still looked like something that shouldn't have survived but had held on by the skin of its teeth, though it was slowly healing under Neil's care, and Andrew did not want to think about that, nor did he want another weight in his bed to get used to all over again.

“It has to go,” Andrew said, turning the knife around in his hand and watching the light glint off the blade.

“Alright,” Neil simply said and got out of bed. Gently, he scooped the cat up in his arms and padded out of the room, and when he came back, he closed the door behind him and slid back under the blanket with a yawn.

“Night,” he said, switching off the light. Andrew slid the knife back into its sheath under the pillow, but kept his fingertips pressed to the edge. He listened as Neil's breathing evened out again, let his fingers withdraw from the knife one by one, and placed his hand near the top of Neil's curved spine instead, where he could just about feel his warmth if he concentrated.

Andrew's knife was not the only weapon in this bed; he and Neil both were weapons in their own ways. It was a thought more soothing than it had any right to be, and slowly, very slowly, Andrew started to drift off again.

_Click._

_Tap tap tap._

_Fhwump._

He sighed. Of course. Of course Neil had managed to pick up the one cat that not only had the most ridiculous will to survive, but also the skill to open doors. Andrew pushed his face into the pillow and let the irritation trickle through him like rainwater until it was only static in his brain. Fine. He would let the beast sleep in their bed tonight, but if it so much as put a single toe bean on his side of the mattress, Andrew was going to throw it out of the fucking window, and tomorrow he was going to change the door knob on the bedroom, or better yet, find a lock.

Apparently satisfied with this compromise, the cat curled up on Neil's pillow and went to sleep.

 

3

Lately, Neil had begun to get noisier in bed.

Never loud, because Neil was trained to keep himself quiet under all circumstances, but in the privacy of their apartment, Andrew now sometimes succeeded in coaxing out some of the sweet, delicate sounds that Neil's mouth hadn't known how to shape until they did. There were familiar gasps and hisses, trembly moans stumbling from his throat like newborn foals taking their first steps, low hums like honey and tiny, cut-off yelps like melting sugar that Andrew liked to kiss from his mouth. Once, something like keening, higher in pitch and drawn-out, and, increasingly, laughter, bubbling and breathy and slightly hoarse, and that one was unexpected, because sex was serious and _hard_ and yet here they were, trading easy banter back and forth in their shared bed with Andrew's hand around Neil's cock and Neil's legs spread wantonly wide.

“I want to hear you laugh, one day,” Neil told him, his toes digging into the mattress as Andrew picked up the pace, fingers tangling idly in Andrew's hair.

“You've heard me laugh before,” Andrew felt compelled to point out. Neil shook his head, sighed and squirmed a little, like he was trying not to buck up into Andrew's hand, and pulled him down by the hair for a bruising kiss.

“Not that kind of laughter,” he murmured. “I want the real deal.”

“Well, I want to blow you,” Andrew said, to steer the topic back to safer ground. “Yes or no?”

Neil thought about this, and Andrew took his hand away to give him space and sat up, looking down at his clothes. Apparently he'd grabbed a pair of sweatpants that belonged to Neil. He didn't feel like taking them off, so he went with his t-shirt instead, and Neil made an appreciative noise.

“Yes,” he said, and: “can I touch your shoulders?”

“Yes,” Andrew echoed, and shimmied himself between Neil's legs, placing open-mouthed kisses on the skin between the scars on Neil's abdomen. Neil reached down to stroke a hand through Andrew's hair again and played with the shorter strands at the back of his neck until Andrew shivered and tugged his hand down to his shoulder instead.

“Thought you wanted to touch here.”

“Mm,” Neil hummed, smoothing his palm over Andrew's shoulder and digging his fingertips into the muscles there. He did the same on Andrew's other side, kneading gently, and Andrew took him in his mouth and left his arms braced on either side of Neil's hips.

The sound Neil made was one of his higher ones, something between a yelp and a moan, and Andrew allowed himself a moment to catalogue and appreciate it when it was abruptly followed by a laugh. Frowning, Andrew pushed himself off and looked up just in time to see grey fur barrel into the side of Neil's neck.

“What, were you worried about me?” Neil crooned, taking his hands off Andrew's shoulders to soothe them over the cat's knobbly back. Andrew shivered at the loss of warmth on his skin.

“Meow,” said the damned cat.

“Yes, quite, I see,” Neil said very solemnly. “That was a very ugly noise. Of course you had to check. But I'm fine, as you can see, so...”

“Mwrr,” the cat made, tapping its paw against Neil's face like it was testing whether or not the skin there could support its weight when it inevitably walked over it. Andrew waited, and a second later, the cat decided that Neil's chest was currently the safer path to take, only halfway across it lay down, and, really now, enough was enough.

When Andrew grabbed the cat, it made a noise that was far, far uglier than Neil's pretty little moan earlier had been, and promptly dug its claws into the bare skin of Neil's chest. The resulting yelp was nothing like his sex noises, so the cat was either just as stupid as Andrew always claimed it was, or else it hadn't wanted to check on Neil at all and had only waited for the most inconvenient moment to disturb them, but Andrew had no patience for it either way and ignored Neil's uttered curse as he pried the cat's claws from him and dumped it unceremoniously outside the bedroom door.

“Fucking nuisance,” he told it, and the cat shook itself off and tucked its legs underneath itself, making a lopsided loaf shape in the middle of the corridor. For sure Andrew was going to trip over it later on the way to the bathroom.

“You're taking this thing to the shelter tomorrow,” Andrew told Neil, slamming the door behind him and making his way back to the bed.

“Hmm,” Neil hummed, “you're starting to like him, though.”

“Don't say stupid things.”

Neil waved this away. “I always say stupid things, remember? And yet you still haven't taken me to the shelter for some other idiot to look after.”

“You'd only scratch their eyes out and it'd fall back on me,” Andrew said, and Neil smothered his laugh in a pillow this time. It had the benefit of him lying back down, still naked and exposed, miraculously still hard, and Andrew decided he didn't want to think or talk about cats anymore, he wanted to hear more of Neil's noises, preferably while he had Neil's cock in his mouth and the bedroom door remained firmly shut.

 

4

“In what world do you take a cat to the shelter and come back with _two_ instead of zero?”

Neil, at least, had the good grace to look somewhat ashamed of himself. The cat he'd picked up at the park was sulking under the coffee table, and the new ginger one that was more fluff than cat had found one of the feathers that Neil had brought home for the other one to play with at some point. Fuck, Andrew was going to have to start calling them names now. Fat grey nuisance and big ugly ginger nuisance was far too unwieldy.

“It was an accident?” Neil tried, playing with the sleeves of his hoodie. It was already covered in red and white cat hair.

“You were an accident,” Andrew growled and stalked off. He needed some sugar to cope with this newest intrusion into his life. Unfortunately for him, said intrusion was still blissfully unaware of Andrew's dislike of it, and followed him into the kitchen with its tail in the air and a hopeful expression on its ugly face.

“If I feed you ice-cream, will you die?” Andrew asked it idly, crouched in front of the freezer as the cat pressed itself closer. He could hear Neil cooing at the other one in the living room, probably trying to coax it out from under the coffee table. Fat fucking chance.

“Brrp,” the new cat said, bumping its head against Andrew's arm. One of its eyes was clouded over and it was drooling copiously onto Andrew's shirt. Somehow, its fur looked matted even though Neil had been brushing it when Andrew came home. It really was an ugly bastard. If Andrew had had a say in the whole thing, he'd have picked one of the sleek, shiny black ones that looked like bad luck and his Maserati and hunted their own mice so you didn't have to feed them. Not that Andrew wanted a cat, but if he had to tolerate them in his house, he didn't want a drooly one with a lopsided face that shed hair if you so much as glanced at it.

“Fucking nuisance,” Andrew sighed, and got up to find the box of cat food.

 

5

Andrew hated mornings.

It wasn't a thing people generally noticed about him, because he forced himself to get up early every day regardless, and if he was a little less verbose and a little more irritated than usual, it wasn't enough to make a real difference unless someone was specifically looking for it. Unfortunately for Andrew, Neil was very fond of looking at Andrew, and also much better at early mornings than him, which meant that nowadays there was usually a pot of coffee waiting in the kitchen for him when he dragged himself out of bed. He supposed it could be worse, especially on the days when he caught Neil just before he went for his morning run. Sweet coffee, Neil's bed hair and running shorts were, he had to admit, generally rather good motivators to get up, though he still resented the fact that he had to rely on these things to wake him up properly.

The first time Andrew accidentally slept in, he and Neil had been living together for a year. Their bed hadn't felt like an unsafe zone for a long while now, but Neil getting up usually never failed to jolt Andrew awake. Today, he'd clean missed it, and the sight of the empty pillow beside him when he blinked open his eyes made him feel almost nauseous for a moment. Daylight rippled over the rumpled sheets, too soft and bright for dawn, and one of the cats was tucked under Andrew's chin, fast asleep with one paw flung over its face.

Disoriented, Andrew lay still for a minute and tried to swallow down the dryness in his mouth. He moved his leg a little and encountered a second heavy warmth in the crook of his knees. This one squirmed when he nudged it and made a minuscule noise of protest. Andrew ignored it and pulled himself up into a sitting position, rubbing at his eyes. At some point in the night, he had pulled on the sweatpants that Neil had shucked off, and there was a second blanket on the bed that he didn't remember fetching for himself.

“This,” he told the cats, indicating the situation and then pointing his index finger at each of them in turn, “is all your fault, and I'm blaming you entirely. Just so we're clear.”

He let himself stare blankly into space for a few more minutes, then dared a glimpse at the alarm clock on the window sill behind him.

Noon.

He'd slept until noon, without even waking up once. He couldn't remember the last time he'd even stayed in bed past eight – occasionally, he fell asleep again on the sofa after his first fix of coffee, but that barely counted, and even after a night in Columbia he'd never been out for this long.

Fat Cat lifted its head and blinked lazily at him. For a moment, Andrew wondered if it could read his thoughts and was mocking him, then he shook himself out of this stupidity and threw back the covers to get out of bed. This whole undisturbed, restful sleep thing was obviously bad for his brain, and he was never going to try it again.

He made it to the bathroom and back to grab a hoodie before Neil's head popped around the door frame, a spatula in his hand and a grin on his face.

“Morning,” he chirped, and one of the cats meowed in the exact same tone in reply. Idiot beasts, always talking back like they were having an actual fucking conversation. “I made waffles, want some?”

“Why didn't you wake me,” Andrew demanded, yanking at the sleeves of his hoodie which were already fraying from the constant abuse Andrew gave them for being just a little too short to pull over his hands. He was going to toss it out the next chance he got, but for now, he needed its fleece lining to keep the morning chills at bay. Noon chills. Fuck.

“You looked like you could use it,” Neil said, gazing at him with an expression in his eyes that wasn't pity, but something Andrew couldn't stomach any better either. “Besides, I didn't want to disturb the cats.”

“Fucking nuisances,” Andrew hissed, and went back to the bed to grab the blankets out from under them just to make a point.

 

+1

“Neil?”

It had been twenty-seven minutes and thirty seconds since Neil had left their bed and locked himself in the bathroom. Andrew wasn't worried – he was more vexed than anything, because he couldn't go back to sleep not knowing whether Neil was going to come back any minute or not at all, and because the cats were getting antsy and pissing him off.

They had names now – suggested by Nicky and voted on by the rest of the Foxes, and while Neil had gone with the most popular choices, which were also the most ludicrous ones to exactly no one's surprise, he was still enough of a shit to assign 'Sir Fat Cat McCatterson' to the skinny, fluffy ginger nuisance that was longer than he was broad, and 'King Fluffkins' to the fattest cat alive with the short and silky and decidedly un-fluffy fur, instead of the other way around. Andrew could get behind that little rebellious streak and had conceded to calling them Sir and King.

Sir was currently winding around his feet, drooling anxiously – though he was always drooling – and King had taken up a watchful position a few steps away, what was left of his mangled ears twitching at every tiny sound coming from within the bathroom. Neither of them liked closed doors.

“I'm fine,” Neil replied, and even if that hadn't been his god damn catch phrase during the least fine time of his life, it was immediately clear from how hollowed out and laboured his voice sounded that he was anything but fine.

“No shit,” Andrew said. “You can still work that smart mouth of yours, so obviously you're still alive.”

“Don't – I just – I don't want you to see this.”

“See what,” Andrew said, his hand clenching around the door handle. King had tried to open it earlier and had made an angry noise when it hadn't budged. Andrew now made another attempt, even though he knew it was locked, and felt a similar frustration well up in him. “See what?” he repeated, his mind filled with old images of the kind of damage one could do with a misappropriated razor, though he made an effort to swallow them down like bile.

“Nothing,” Neil said, “I – I cut my hair.”

Andrew waited, but nothing else was forthcoming, and the door remained closed.

“Okay,” he said, “we're just going to wait here then until you're done being a drama queen.”

He took a few steps back, sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall opposite the bathroom door. Neil didn't say anything anymore, and Sir had had enough of the humans talking instead of opening doors that weren't meant to stay shut, and started yelling at the offending thing.

Five minutes later, King joined in.

After fifteen, Andrew stopped checking his phone and went to fetch a cushion to sit on and a blanket, in case they were going to stay camped out here all night, but King and Sir were making such a racket that it only took a little while longer before Neil finally unlocked the door.

He had the hood of his shirt pulled up over his head and hesitated for a moment before walking over to where Andrew was sitting. Sir ran into the bathroom to investigate, but King opted to follow Neil and curled up in his lap the minute Neil crouched down by Andrew's side with his hands fisted in the pocket of his hoodie and put his head on Andrew's shoulder.

“Can I see?” Andrew asked, rubbing the fabric of Neil's hood between thumb and index finger without pulling it off yet. Neil nodded and kept his face hidden in the crook of Andrew's neck.

Most of his hair was gone. He'd buzzed it brutally short, ruining the handsome undercut Allison had talked him into getting the other week, not a single of his fine, loose curls left up top. Andrew ran his fingers over the uneven patches and felt it bristle under his skin. Somehow, Neil looked smaller like this.

“Nathan kept his hair short,” Neil explained, lifting his head with a bitter, layered artichoke of a smile. Andrew wanted to peel away the stringy outer bits and find its heart again, but he knew that ugly things needed to be said and chewed and swallowed sometimes to stop them from festering. “I thought if I made myself look even more like him, I would finally get used to it. I'm so tired of seeing him in the mirror every day.”

“And did it help?” Andrew asked.

Neil snorted. “No,” he admitted, “I just feel uglier.”

Andrew knew that Neil didn't just mean it in a physical way, and didn't protest. They let the silence settle around them, King's low purring in Neil's lap the only thing that felt awake in the dark of the night, and then Sir knocked something off the sink and the sudden noise seemed to clear away the tangled weeds of their respective thoughts.

“So, you guys ganged up on me,” Neil said lightly, digging his fingers into King's short fur. Andrew reached up to run his own hands over Neil's head again, enjoying the new resistance there. He was going to miss being able to hold on to it when they kissed, but that was all. “Have you changed your opinion about the cats, then?”

“Fucking nuisances,” Andrew said, and Neil hummed and hid a small, sweet laugh in Andrew's neck.

“You know what?” Neil murmured. “I think you hate them the same way you hate me.”

“Don't say stupid things,” Andrew said, but didn't kick Sir away when he came looking for warmth and joined their ridiculous huddle on the floor.

 


End file.
